The oldest PC games that are still being supported...

[Zenoth]

Can anyone here name me PC games, old ones, that are still being supported today by their (still existing and active) developers?

It's not a contest, by the way, nor do I ask for any podium preferences. I'm merely asking for a "list" of games known to be "old and still being supported". What do I mean by "being supported"? Well, simply put, by that I mean that the game still receives updates, and/or at the very least the developers still provide troubleshooting-related issues for it.

The definition of "old" is of course subjective, but you certainly get the point, don't mention "recent" games (also a subjective thing) such as FarCry or Doom 3 or Half-Life 2. I'm mostly (but not only) targeting the 7+ or 8+ years-old games here. A preferred format for this would be to name the developers and the supported game(s). I will name two developers right from the start because they are obviously easy ones...


- Blizzard

They still release patches for StarCraft, which is a 10 years-old game.

- Valve

They released updates for Half-Life / GoldSrc somewhere last year I believe (so, basically, still very recent support and they haven't turned the switch off at all on that engine and the official games based on it), if not a few this very year which I might have missed, also a 10 years-old game / engine.

Now let's see what else we can come up with.

 

[acheron]

NetHack, 1987.

Though the last update was in Dec. 2003. There's a list of bugs and things that will be fixed in the "next version" at nethack.org, so theoretically there's going to be another update sometime, but almost 5 years between updates is the longest they've gone before, so who knows.

(Edit: Actually, I seem to remember there being a couple minor patches since the last major update, so it's been "supported" more recently than 2003. Nethack.org is blocked for me at work (fuck you, proxy) but you can find the most recent patch there.)

 

[nerp]

CS 1.6 just got an update. That game has been around for quite some time.

 

[lupi]

The topic is DOA. The vast majority of developement studies only provide the game to a publisher whom buys the requirement to support the game from the dev. If the publisher would release the game back to the dev you would probably see significantly more games get long term support, but when there is contractual language about who is supposed to deliver or approve of updates, ain't gonna happen.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Not the oldest, but still good work:

Bioware - they just issued a final patch for Neverwinter Nights 1 (2002)